Stephen Wise often holds an “Ask the Rabbi Anything” session during Shabbat services at his Shaarei-Beth El synagogue in Oakville, Ontario, just outside Toronto.
Since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that left almost 1,200 people dead, the main topics of conversation at the sessions have been familiar: the war in Gaza, Israeli hostages still in Hamas’ grasp, and the rising global tide of antisemitism.
But late last month, a new question arose. Someone asked about the plight of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Why We Wrote This
As images of the starvation in Gaza have multiplied, the Jewish diaspora has increasingly found itself torn between its love of Israel and its abhorrence of the suffering of Palestinians. Now, it’s tentatively starting to stand against Gazan hunger.
“The first question,” Rabbi Wise recalls, “was, ‘Rabbi, what do we do about what’s happening in Gaza? There’s a crisis. There’s hunger.’”
Last weekend, Israelis erupted in one of the largest demonstrations since the war began, protesting the government’s decision to expand the war in Gaza. Among Jews living abroad, however, large protests or strong statements by Jewish leadership criticizing the war have been largely absent.
Yet the question asked at Rabbi Wise’s synagogue points to a nascent shift in thought, numerous Jewish leaders say. The images of suffering in Gaza have been a tipping point.
Since late July, more than 1,000 rabbis around the world have signed an open letter warning of “a grave moral crisis, threatening the very basis of Judaism.” And this week, more than 80 Orthodox rabbis called upon Israel to address the starvation in Gaza and the violence being carried out by Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
Courtesi of Rabbi Stephen Wise
Still, for most in the Jewish diaspora – especially outside the United States, where Jews are a particularly small minority – the prospect of speaking out publicly remains deeply unsettling. In Jewish communities that are themselves conflicted, speaking out risks alienation and further division at a time when rising antisemitism is making Jews feel less safe.
The instinct to unify in times of crisis is being tested by misgivings about Israel’s current government – the furthest right and most religious coalition in the country’s history. Support of Israel remains a core part of the community’s identity. However, the Jewish diaspora is increasingly churning.
“The flurry of activity in the past few weeks has caused a lot of deep soul-searching in the Jewish community,” says Rabbi Wise. “In myself, in my community in Oakville, and amongst my fellow rabbis across the country.”
Horrified by Gaza, but reticent to speak out
The United Nations on Friday officially recognized conditions in Gaza as a famine, though the Israeli government has denied the U.N. report on the situation as an “outright lie.”
Many say the images of starvation in Gaza have changed the conversation. “The straw that broke the camel’s back is hunger,” says Colin Shindler, a Jewish commentator and the first-ever professor of Israel studies in the United Kingdom.
But speaking out is a different matter.
In a trend reflected across the West, antisemitic acts in France increased by nearly 300% the year after the Oct. 7 attack. In Canada, police-reported hate crimes against Jews far exceeded those against any other religious group in 2024. Synagogues across the country have implemented extraordinary security measures, such as reinforced doors and active-shooter training. At pro-Palestinian rallies, where Israel is frequently accused of genocide by protesters, many Jews have felt personally targeted, including by progressives who used to be allies.
It’s created a “real collective defense,” says Mira Sucharov, a political scientist at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, who focuses on Jewish politics and is Jewish herself.
Toronto has Canada’s largest Jewish population, and many of them arrived post-Holocaust, which leaves them feeling closer to the threat of antisemitic violence, observers say. Some Jewish leaders there are seeking a middle ground.
Yael Splansky, senior rabbi at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, includes prayers of healing for the hostages, the wounded soldiers and civilians of Israel, as well as for the innocents of Gaza. She says many congregants are “shattered” over the reports of widespread hunger in Gaza and are “rightly confused by the conflicting information they are receiving.”
But nearly every aspect of the situation is fraught, leading to different interpretations of accountability, justice, and the way forward.
Rabbi Splansky, for instance, argues that Hamas is too often left out of the conversation.
“Much of the world has forgotten that Hamas is a recognized terrorist organization,” she writes in an email. “Those who wish for a better life for Gazans – including heads of state – forget to protest and pressure Hamas, who is holding its own people hostage.”
Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press/AP
Others argue that Jewish leadership needs to stand more firmly against the horrors in Gaza, also because those horrors are fueling anti-Israel sentiment – whether for legitimate or antisemitic reasons.
Mainline Jewish organizations in Canada “always say, ‘Everyone hates Israel, the world is antisemitic,’” says Jon Allen, a former Canadian ambassador to Israel. “But they make no connection between the war and rising antisemitism.”
In such an atmosphere of insecurity and confusion, there is little incentive for saying anything at all publicly. Jews who do speak out often get accused of being Hamas sympathizers.
“There’s a lot of mistrust, a lot of binary thinking, and also intergenerational and Holocaust trauma,” says Professor Sucharov.
“You can’t allow people to starve”
Yet that relative silence is not the same as consent, many say. Jewish leaders have to walk a difficult line not to create rifts within their own community, which are deeply polarized.
“As a rabbi, you have to be very careful,” says Edward van Voolen, a rabbi in the Netherlands and a signatory of the worldwide letter. Statements from Jewish leaders are often more mild, he says, “because they have to balance a larger community.”
“Many rabbis won’t sign those letters for that reason,” adds Lawrence Englander, rabbi emeritus of Solel Congregation in Mississauga, Ontario, who also signed onto the worldwide letter. But he acknowledges that perhaps that’s not enough. “I think if anything,” he says, “what we’re finding is that maybe our protests have to become more public.”
Rabbi Wise did sign the open letter. “There are times when, as a rabbi, I need to say … ‘I support Israel, I love Israel, and because I love Israel so much, I think that I would suggest we move in a path that gets to this end goal of peace, which is what I want.’”
Sara Miller Llana/The Christian Science Monitor
To find where Jewish thought really is, look at polling, says Dr. Shindler, the Israeli studies professor. He points to a September 2024 survey of British Jews by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research. Some 80% say they disapprove – 65% strongly, and 15% somewhat – of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The vast, vast majority of British Jews defend the state of Israel,” he says. “A small minority defend the role of its government.”
For Dan Moskovitz, the senior rabbi at Canada’s largest synagogue west of Toronto, this means finding a delicate balance when criticizing Israel.
In early August, Rabbi Moskovitz gave his congregation at Temple Sholom in Vancouver a sermon about hunger, acknowledging that he was “deeply aware of the risks of speaking.”
Those risks are compounded because some in his congregation lost family members on Oct. 7. It’s because the reasons for starvation in Gaza are complicated, including, he says, Hamas’ initial use of food as a weapon against its own people. It’s because people try to pigeonhole him politically.
But “I’m black-and-white on this: You can’t allow people to starve,” he says. “And I don’t like what this is saying about us as Jews or Israelis as a nation because that’s not who we are. We don’t withhold food from people.”
